Ecobuild Emirates

A growing number of people are joining the anti-wind power bandwagon. But are these people being easily swayed or is there a dark sub-context to perceived perfection of wind power? Lets review the arguments Against Wind Power:

Noisy

The actual noise emitted by a wind turbine is generally only audible for a few hundred yards except under very rare topographical conditions.

Visually Unappealing

The aesthetics of the wind turbines is completely related to the individual. Many people (such as myself) find the look of wind turbines rather inspiring but that is just my personal preference. Many people see wind turbines as blights on the natural landscape and rather ugly. Either way a case against wind power, would not, and should not come down to how they look.

Kills large number of birds

It is true that wind turbines are responsible for a number of bird deaths. However the number being reported is greatly exaggerated and not significant if compared to other sources. If you compare the number of bird deaths from a wind turbine to lattice-type communication towers the numbers would pale in significance.

Threat to Bio-Diversity

Wind turbines could pose a threat to local bio-diversity. But in most cases environmental impact studies are carried out to ensure the threat is minimal and turbines are usually placed in low impact areas such as farmlands and in the ocean. In addition to that the threat of the fossil fuel industry is far greater on universal biodiversity than wind power could ever be.

Reliability

The reliability of wind turbines has always been a contentious point. Opponents of wind power often claim erroneously that, as an “intermittent generator”, wind power cannot be run as base-load to replace coal-fired power stations and cannot contribute to peak demand without expensive dedicated long-term storage. Since no-one is proposing to run a whole electricity grid on wind power alone, these claims are simplistic. Wind power can reliably power a large percentage of any nations energy needs.

To think in the current climate (pun intended) there would be such ferocious attacks on a cheap, clean and reliable energy source would be funny if it was not so serious. I theorise that traditional energy providers are setting up and funding such groups to protect the interests of their respective industries.